Commerce & Culture has been invited to participate in a mission lead by the Danish Center for Culture and Development aiming to explore the possibilities for establishing a program for photographers in Afghanistan.

This week we visited Kabul, an overwhelming and deeply involving experience. We had the greatest pleasure of meeting and interviewing Afghan photographers, getting to know their needs and challenges and reviewing loads of great work.

It is our hope that we together with these photographers will be able to change the course of the history of photography in Afghanistan, establishing a sustainable network between the local and the global market for photography.

During our mission we visited several cultural institutions and were very impressed by the spirit and determination that we encountered at the newly inaugurated Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul. Before the fall of the Taliban you could not even listen to music on the radio and if you were a professional musician you would have to keep your identity quiet. Below is a short video we made at the institute, we hope it passes on some of our impressions.